The Coronation of Queen
Elizabeth

On January 15th, 1559,
England’s twenty-five-year-old sovereign left Whitehall to be crowned Queen.
This article, by A.L. Rowse, was first published in May 1953, in a special
issue of History Today that marked the imminent coronation of Queen
Elizabeth II.

Elizabeth I in her coronation
robes, patterned with Tudor roses and trimmed with ermine.The coronation of the
first Elizabeth is of considerable interest to us and of greater historical
importance than most. Not only was it the last occasion on which the Latin
service was used, as throughout Plantagenet times, and with the Roman mass, but
what happened on the occasion was a portent of the policy the new Queen would
pursue, a pointer to the Elizabethan religious settlement which has subsisted
essentially unchanged ever since. It is precisely that that has given rise to
some controversy among historians as to what precisely happened. Did the Queen
remain present throughout the Mass or did she withdraw to her traverse – or
private closet in St. Edward’s chapel – at the crucial point of the
consecration and elevation of the Host? Did the officiating bishop elevate the
Host? Did the Queen communicate or not? We shall see – as well as we can see,
from the curious confusion of the evidence.

The full proceedings of a coronation in medieval times, and up to Elizabeth I’s
and beyond, fell into four parts. The new monarch had first to take possession
of the Tower: the significance of that move is obvious enough – it was to make
sure of London. And, in the English way, the tradition continued to be adhered
to for some time after the necessity for the action had gone. The second stage
was the sovereign’s progress through the city to Westminster on the eve of the coronation.
The third was the coronation itself in Westminster Abbey, with the procession
to it. The fourth was the banquet in Westminster Hall after the ceremonies in
the Abbey.

In those days, it was
desirable to invest the new sovereign as soon as possible with the full
authority that anointing and crowning conferred. Mary had died on November
17th, 1558; Elizabeth was crowned in her place within two months after. She had
had a rapturous reception from London – sick of the burnings and failures of
Mary’s reign – when she just rode in to the city as Queen. And Elizabeth set
herself to capture the hearts of the people as she well knew how. (Not for
nothing was she Anne Boleyn’s daughter.) She had spent Christmas at Whitehall;
on Thursday, January 13th, 1559, she made her move to the Tower, going by water
in her state-barge down the Thames. An Italian envoy who saw the spectacle was
reminded of the great ceremony of the Doges – the mystic marriage of Venice
with the sea.

On Saturday, the whole Court
having gathered at the Tower, the Queen set out in procession, in the clear
snowy air, through the streets so familiar to us from the engravings and
pictures of Wyngaerde, Hollar and others. Only twenty-five years ago – and
Elizabeth had been carried through these self-same streets in the womb of her
mother to her coronation.

The verses for the pageants
had been written by the court-poets, John Leland and Nicholas Udall:

Many who watched the
daughter’s triumph today must have seen the spectacle of the mother – herself
grand-daughter of a Lord Mayor; some few must have reflected on the chances and
ironies of history.

Of them none was more
aware of the treacherous sands of high politics than Elizabeth and from the
first she set herself to conquer the heart of the city, already well-inclined,
and to attach it to her chariot. The haughty Feria, Philip’s representative in
England, wrote contemptuously: ‘she is very much wedded to the people and
thinks as they do, and therefore treats foreigners slightingly.’ Gone were the
days of deference to Philip’s ambassador, who could transmit his master’s
orders to England. After all, Elizabeth owed her very life and safety to the
unspoken support of the English people. Feria was soon obliged to change his
tone, from contempt to apprehension: ‘she seems to me incomparably more feared
than her sister and gives her orders and has her way as absolutely as her
father did.’

Today Elizabeth completed her
conquest of London. ‘Her Grace, by holding up her hands and merry countenance
to such as stood far off, and most tender and gentle language to those that
stood nigh to her Grace, did declare herself no less thankfully to receive her
people’s good will, than they lovingly opened it unto her.’ In return, ‘the
people again were wonderfully ravished with the loving answers and gestures of
their Princess, like to the which they had before tried at her first coming to
the Tower from Hatfield.’

At Fenchurch a richly
furnished stage had been erected, ‘whereon stood a noise of instruments, and a
child in costly apparel, which was appointed to welcome the Queen’s majesty in
the whole city’s behalf.’ The child proceeded to spout the usual Elizabethan
doggerel appropriate to such occasions. The Queen listened with polite
attention, but had to call for order in the nursery before she could hear. What
she heard was such stuff as this:

The second is true hearts, which love thee from their root,
Whose suit is triumph now, and ruleth all the game.
Which faithfulness have won, and all untruth driven out;
Which skip for joy whenas they hear thy happy name.

It is the poetry of Bottom the
weaver, Snug the joiner, and Flute the bellows-mender. Whatever the Queen
thought of it – and there is no evidence that her own taste in poetry was much
better – she acted her part, as she could always be trusted to do, superb
actress that she was. ‘Here was noted in the Queen’s Majesty’s countenance,
during the time that the child spake, besides a perpetual attentiveness in her
face, a marvellous change in look, as the child’s words touched either her
person, or the people’s tongues or hearts.’ There was no mistaking the
intent of the verses: the Protestants were now on top.

Right across Gracechurch
Street there stretched a structure with battlements and three gates. Above the
main gate were three stages; in the lowest were the figures of Henry VII and
his queen, Elizabeth of York; next above were Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn,
resurrected now – poor woman. At the top stood Elizabeth, alone. (For how long?
some must have thought.) The two sides of the building were ‘filled with loud
noises of music. And all empty places thereof were furnished with sentences
concerning unity.’ The whole pageant was garnished with red and white roses and
entitled ‘the uniting of the two houses of Lancaster and York.’ We remember the
famous chronicle of Edward Hall on this theme and the historical material with
which it provided Shakespeare; and whatever we may suppose as to the crudity of
the pageants, we must not forget what they led on to – the cycle of
Shakespeare’s plays on English history.

In Cornhill the conduit was
curiously trimmed with rich banners; and here was the second pageant, inculcating
the virtues of good governance: ‘Pure Religion, Love of Subjects, Wisdom and
Justice, which did tread their contrary vices under their feet.’ Here too, the
Protestant bias of the city was underlined:

While that Religion True shall
Ignorance suppress,
And with her weighty foot break
Superstition’s head . . .

All along the streets from
Fenchurch to Cheapside the city companies stood in their livery hoods and rich
furs; the sheets enclosed with wooden rails and hanged with cloths, tapestry,
arras, damask and silks. Banners and streamers hung from the windows; wifflers
and garders of the companies stood out in their chains of gold. At the upper
end of Cheapside the Queen received the city’s gift, a purse of crimson satin
with a thousand marks in gold. She took the purse with both hands and made one
of those little extempore speeches she had always at command:

I thank my Lord Mayor, his brethren and you all. And whereas your request
is that I should continue your good Lady and Queen, be ye ensured that I will
be as good unto you as ever queen was unto her people. No will in me can lack,
neither, do I trust, shall there lack any power. And persuade yourselves that
for the safety and quietness of you all, I will not spare, if need be to spend
my blood. God thank you all.’

This piece of royal eloquence
moved the crowd to great enthusiasm, ‘the heartiness thereof was so wonderful
and the words so jointly knit.’ The Queen was observed to smile: she had heard
someone say, ‘Remember old king Harry the eighth?’ She saw an ancient citizen
turn his back and weep: ‘I warrant you it is for gladness,’ she said. No points
were going to be lost in that quarter. One observes the personal touch in
government at every point then: some element of which remains with monarchy still,
even if symbolic rather than actual.

In Cheapside ‘upon the porch
of St Peter’s Church door stood the waits of the city, which did give a
pleasant noise with their instruments as the Queen’s Majesty did pass by, which
on every side cast her countenance and wished well to all her most loving
people.’ The Little Conduit was decked with a pageant of which the Queen
politely inquired the signification. It signified Time, she was told. ‘ “Time?”
quoth she, “and Time hath brought me hither”.’ Such sententiousness was much to
Elizabethan taste. From a cave there issued Father Time, leading his daughter
Truth, who had a book for the Queen, ‘Verbum Veritatis.’ Sir John Perrot, who
was one of the bearers of her canopy, took it. (He prided himself on his marked
resemblance to Henry VIII; he ended in the Tower.) The Queen took the Bible,
kissed it, held it up in both her hands and laid it on her breast. It is to be
feared that circumstances were not to permit her an unqualified indulgence in
truth.

And so, on to St Paul’s
churchyard, where one of the boys of St Paul’s school spoke a Latin oration in
her honour, comparing her to Plato’s philosopher-king. ‘Haec lieris Graecis et
Latinis eximia, ingenioque praepollens est.’ That was no more than the truth.
‘Hac imperante, pietas vigebit, Anglia florebit, aurea secula redibunt.’ As to
that, time would show; or – to use Elizabeth’s own words to Parliament – ‘the
sequel shall declarer.’ We remember what a part the ‘children of Paul’s’ were
to play in the drama of subsequent years, performing the plays of Lyly and
others, and rivalling the companies of adult players.

On through Ludgate, the
forefront of the gate ‘being finely trimmed up against her Majesty’s coming’;
and so into Fleet Street, where against the conduit the last pageant was
erected. It showed a return to the Protestant theme: the Queen was Debora the
judge, restorer of the house of Israel. Outside St Dunstan’s church, where the
children of the hospital were standing, the Queen stayed her chariot and was
seen to lift up her eyes as if in prayer, as who should say, ‘I here see this
merciful work towards the poor whom I must in the midst of my royalty needs
remember.’ From which we see that none of the arts of propaganda was lost on
Elizabeth. At Temple Bar the city said farewell to her; on the gate itself the
images of the giants Gogmagog and Corineus holding scrolls of Latin and English
verses. ‘Thus the Queen’s Highness passed through the city which, without any
foreign person, of itself beautified itself.’ Someone pointed out that there
was no cost spared; ‘Her Grace answered that she did well consider the same and
that it should be remembered.’

It so happens that there
survives a fascinating volume of pen and ink drawings which are the original
designs for the coronation procession, and showing the lay-out of the dais-end
of Westminster Hall for the banquet and the arrangement of the central space
around the throne and up to St Edward’s Chapel in the Abbey for the ceremonies
there. It is clearly an official sketch of the proceedings, drawn up for the
benefit of those taking part in it and evidently discussed and approved by the
Queen, for the actual order of events very largely followed the project as
sketched. As we turn over the parchment leaves, the procession from the Tower
to Whitehall unrolls before our eyes.

The first half of the book
portrays this event; so we must turn to the middle and run the leaves backwards
to get the order of the procession. We see the head of it there entering the
gate of Whitehall Palace, while the first folio shows us the procession being
wound up by the Queen’s guard just emerging from a gateway of the Tower of
London. The procession follows a logical order of precedence, beginning with
the messengers of the Queen’s privy chamber, with the serjeant-porter, who was
responsible for the entrance-gate to the royal residences, and the
gentleman-harbinger, whose duty it was to make the residence ready on the
approach of the Queen. Then come her personal servants, gentleman-ushers and sewers
of the chamber, followed by the squires of the body and the aldermen of London.
Next are the chaplains and clerks, clerks of the privy council, of the privy
seal and the signet. Now the masters in chancery, the law-serjeants and the
judges, with the Lord Chief Baron and the Lord Chief Justice of Common Pleas,
the Master of the Rolls and the Lord Chief Justice of England walking two by
two. Next come the knights and the peers, spiritual and temporal, in their
proper order.

Then follow the whole body of
the officers of state and of the Queen’s household, headed by the earl of
Arundel, bearing the Queen’s sword, on one side the duke of Norfolk, Earl
Marshal, on the other, the earl of Oxford, Lord Chamberlain. After these come
the mayor of London, Garter king of arms and Drue Drury, great usher of the
privy chamber. Next, Anthony Wingfield, representing the duke of Guyenne, arid
Anthony Light, representing the duke of Normandy, preceded the foreign
ambassadors, who were only four in number. There follow the great officers of
state, Lord Treasurer and Lord Keeper of the Great Seal – who were the Marquis
of Winchester and Sir Nicholas Bacon respectively, the Lord Privy Seal and the
Lord Admiral, and so on. With the Archbishop of York the Archbishop of Canterbury
is set down to walk; but Cardinal Pole was dead and the see was not yet filled.
Then come the treasurer and the comptroller of the household, and the two
secretaries – one of them Mr Secretary Cecil.

This all leads up to the
centrepiece of the whole show – the Queen’s litter drawn by two mules, the
first led by Lord Ambrose Dudley, the second by Lord Giles Paulet; the canopy
over it borne by two knights on either side; seated alone within, the figure
that was to become so famous, her coronation robes spread before and behind.
Immediately after her rides Lord Robert Dudley, leading the palfrey of honour –
the Queen’s own palfrey. Her equerries and footmen march bare-headed on either
side next the litter, and outside, the pensioners on foot with their halberds.
The Queen’s litter is depicted as followed by six ladies riding upon palfreys,
and by three chariots each followed similarly: these would be the peeresses and
ladies of the household. Behind the last chariot come the henchmen upon their
steering horses – depicted in pretty, prancing attitudes. We get back to the
first folio that gives us the Queen’s guard issuing from the Tower gate, three
by three – as the regular order of march was then – led by the captain of the
guard and the master of the henchmen. In the background is the outer wall of
the Tower, some roofs within and houses without – the last a tavern with its
signboard out.

Returning to the centre of the
book, we find a drawing of the entrance front of Westminster Hall and,
opposite, the Queen’s table upon the dais at the upper end within, with the
long boards laid lengthways down the Hall as in colleges today, where similar
ways and customs continue. The next folios lay down the order of the procession
to the Abbey, precisely as we shall see it took place. But we have two
additional pieces of information: the earl of Huntingdon is given as bearing
the Queen’s spurs, the earl of Bedford St Edward’s staff. Both these peers –
the first of royal Plantagenet lineage, the second very much a new man, a Russell
of the second generation – were decided Protestants, in favour of the new deal.
A rubric is given: ‘Nota that neither Dukes Marquises Earls nor Viscounts put
on their caps of estate with coronals on their heads until the Queen’s Highness
be crowned and then they to put on the same and so to continue all day long
until the Queen’s Highness be withdrawn into her chamber at night.’

Most interesting of all are
the two folios at the end that give us the lay-out for the ceremonies in the
Abbey. The central space at the crossing, where so many coronations have taken
place, is railed off to make a square enclosure. Within it the ‘throne’ is
erected: an octagonal platform raised high with ‘the chair upon the throne’,
and with several steps up to the platform from the choir on one side and from
the altar on the other. A trap-door in the corner leads to a ‘chamber under the
throne’; there are men to guard this chamber and the steps on either side.
Going up towards the altar, on the north side standing room is railed off for
the rest of the Council who are not lords, and on the south side for the
ambassadors.

Lastly, we see the disposition
of St Edward’s chapel; and we learn from this that the ‘Queen’s traverse to
make her ready in after the ceremonies and service done’ is placed within it on
the south side of the altar. Before the altar are placed the cushions for the
Queen to kneel upon ‘when she shall offer to St Edward’s shrine’. Outside the
chapel, in the sanctuary on the south side are placed ‘the carpet and cushions
for the Queen to kneel upon when she taketh her prayers to Almighty God before
she doeth to (be) anointed and crowned. The carpet is of blue velvet and the
cushions of cloth of gold.’ Straight in front of the high altar is shown ‘the
carpet of cloth of gold and cushions of the same for the Queen to be anointed’.
This lay-out of the space clears up one or two points that have been matter of
historical dispute; for example, it makes it quite clear that the traverse to
which the Queen retired at an important moment in the service was off the stage
entirely: it was into St Edward’s chapel that she withdrew.

One general reflection that is
borne home to us from a scrutiny of this prompt-book, so to say – corroborated
by our knowledge of what took place – is that the coronation was essentially a
personal affair of the sovereign, attended upon by the nobility and the
bishops, the officers of state and of the household: an affair of the Court,
with which the general public had very little to do – except as spectators, and
they were almost exclusively the people of London – and to which the mayor and
aldermen were invited as a matter of courtesy.

Sunday, January 16th, was the
day of the coronation. The streets of Westminster were new-laid with gravel and
blue cloth, and railed in on each side. The Queen came from Whitehall first to
Westminster Hall, preceded by trumpets, knights and lords and heralds at arms;
then came the nobles and bishops in scarlet; last, the Queen with all her
footmen waiting on her. Here she was vested in her robes of state and was met
by the bishop who was to perform the ceremony, with all the chapel Royal in
their copes, the bishop mitred. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Pole,
was dead and the see vacant; if Cranmer had been alive he would have crowned
Elizabeth, as he had her mother, but unfortunately he had been burned by Mary.
The duty – or privilege – fell to Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York; but the
bishops were sulking, since they could get no guarantees that Elizabeth would follow
a Catholic course and they had their just suspicions. In the end, Oglethorpe,
Bishop of Carlisle – a not very important ecclesiastic – was persuaded to do
the job. With the chapel singing the traditional Salve festa dies, they all
passed into the Abbey.

Since Mary’s coronation was
only five years away, many of the officers of state bearing principal parts
were the same. Some were Catholics, some Protestants, but most had their eye to
the main chance and were, like sensible men, prepared to swim with the tide.
And what experiences they had survived: the terror of Henry’s reign, the rapids
of Edward VI’s, the hollow reaction of Mary’s. Some of these men had taken part
in all the ceremonies of these years – Henry, Edward, Mary’s funerals, the
coronations of Anne Boleyn, Edward and Mary. The most notable figures of those
years were absent: dukes in particular were wanting: Somerset, Northumberland,
Suffolk had lost their heads; only the young Norfolk remained to play a part
today, and he was to lose his a dozen years later.

Of the swords of state borne
before the Queen, the chief, Curtana – the short, blunt sword of mercy – was
carried by the Earl of Derby, who had carried it at Mary’s coronation. This was
Edward, 3rd Earl, who was at heart a Catholic and had frequently taken part in
proceedings against Protestants in her reign. Now he was facing the prospect of
a new deal. He was to conform and take part, without enthusiasm, in Elizabeth’s
proceedings against Catholics. It was due to his pulling his punch that
Lancashire and Cheshire, where he ruled, were inadequately reformed and that so
many Catholics continued in those parts. The second sword was carried by the
Earl of Rutland. He was a Protestant, who had been a follower of
Northumberland; but he conformed under Mary and now sailed into safe harbour
with Elizabeth, who regarded him with favour for he was intelligent and liked
learning. He was soon to be made ruler of the North, as Lord President. The
Earl of Worcester, a Catholic, carried the third sword. He became a patron of
the drama: his company of actors were entertained at Stratford when
Shakespeare’s father was bailiff. The Earl of Westmorland bore the fourth
sword, also a Catholic, whose foolish young son was to break out into rebellion
in 1569 – the Rising of the Northern Earls – and ruin his family.

Behind them came the Earl of
Arundel: he was Lord High Steward at the coronation and bore the sceptre, as he
had done at Mary’s. Twelfth earl, immensely aristocratic and conservative, he
detested the new dealers of which the key-figure was the new Secretary of
State, William Cecil – and was politically rather stupid. He involved himself
later in the plots of Norfolk to marry Mary Stuart and, outwitted and defeated,
had to retire from the Council. He was lucky that worse didn’t happen to him;
but Cecil was not a vengeful man. Next came the marquis of Winchester, Lord
Treasurer, bearing the orb as he had done for Mary. He was a clever,
complaisant Paulet, who was prepared to do anything for anybody within reason.
He held high office under four reigns; Henry, Edward, Mary, Elizabeth – all
found him indispensable. Once, when somebody asked the old man how he had
managed to survive so many storms, he said that the clue was that he was made
of willow, not oak. He was very useful, allthe more so for keeping his head; he
made, of course, a great fortune and built a vast house. Last, before the
Queen, came the man who could have learnt most from him, the only remaining
duke, the young and foolish Norfolk; a cousin of Elizabeth’s, he bore the
crown.

Then came the Queen, her train
borne by her cousin on the Tudor side, the countess of Lennox, to whose issue
the crown was to descend, for she was mother of Darnley, grandmother of James
I. She was helped in holding up the train by the Lord Chamberlain, another of
the Queen’s Howard cousinage – Lord Howard of Effingham a popular bluff
fighting man, father of a more famous son. So they all passed into the Abbey,
the people scrabbling for the blue cloth they had walked on, as soon as the
Queen had gone by – the custom, apparently, at coronations.

Arrived, the Queen was placed
in a chair of estate in the middle of the crossing, facing the high altar. At
once the recognition – the first part of the coronation service – took place.
She was conducted between two lords to be proclaimed by the bishop and
acclaimed by the people in four directions – north, south, east, and west – the
trumpets sounding at each proclamation. The two peers provided a nice symbolic
contrast: Arundel, of the old Norman nobility, catholic and cultured; Pembroke,
one of the newly risen Herberts, a doughty soldier, hardly literate but a great
favourite with Henry, who had made him his immense fortune from the spoils of
the Church.

Next come the offering: the Queen
was led before the high altar and, kneeling before a bishop seated there,
kissed the paten and made her offering of gold. Then seated in a chair before
the altar she heard the sermon, preached by a bishop: we do not know who. After
the sermon, the Queen now kneeling, came the bidding of the beads – i.e., the
bidding of the people’s prayers – an old-established practice in England
reaching back to earliest times, and of interest since it was the one part of
the ceremony said in English amid all the other devotions said or sung in
Latin.

There followed the
administering of the customary oaths by the bishop to the Queen: to keep the
laws and customs of England, to keep peace to the Church and people, to execute
justice in mercy and truth. Here there stepped forward that symptomatic figure,
Secretary Cecil, master-mind of the new regime, to hand a copy of the oaths to
the bishop. What was he doing here? he was no ecclesiastic: I cannot but think
this the most symbolic move in the whole show. Next came the most sacred moment
of the ceremony – the consecration and anointing of the Queen. This was
initiated by the singing of Veni, Creator and the Litany, and the saying of
several long prayers. Previous sovereigns had endured this lying prostrate on
cushions before the altar, and Mary had not been the one to omit it. Elizabeth
politely knelt: no doubt she held that sufficient.

Now she was vested for the
anointing; buskins, sandals and girdle put on, and over all a tabard of white
sarsnet, the vestment called the colobium sindonis. Upon her head was placed a
coif to protect the holy oil from running down – the coif, we know from the
accounts, was of cambric lace; there were gloves of white linen and fine cotton
wool to dry up the oil after the anointing. We do not know, but, presumably,
Elizabeth was anointed in the five places usual then: palms of the hands,
breast, between the shoulders, on the inside of the elbows, and lastly on the
head. The anointing over, the Queen was invested and made ready for the
delivery of the ornaments, the symbols of power. The gloves were presented to
her by the lord of the manor of Worksop, who was the Earl of Shrewsbury –
subsequently keeper of Mary Stuart and husband of Bess of Hardwick. The sword
was offered to the Queen and redeemed by Arundel, as Lord Steward. Last came
the delivery of the sceptre and the orb. Thus equipped, she was crowned, with
all the trumpets sounding; and, though our account does not mention it, no
doubt all the peers and peeresses put on their coronets at that moment. After
that came the homaging. The Queen had re-delivered the sword and laid it on the
altar, and now returned to her chair of estate. The Bishop of Carlisle put his
hand to the Queen’s hand and did homage first. Then followed the temporal peers
first kneeling and then kissing the Queen; the bishops likewise. This was a
reversal of the traditional order followed at Mary’s coronation: with that
pious devote the Church came first; Elizabeth thought more of the temporal than
of the spiritual.

When the bishop began the
mass, the Queen was seated holding sceptre and orb. The epistle and gospel were
read in both Latin and English, and the gospel was brought her to kiss. She
then made her second offering, going to the altar, preceded by three naked
swords and a sword in the scabbard. There she kissed the pax. But immediately
upon the consecration of the elements beginning, it seems undoubted that the
Queen withdrew to her traverse. Let us hope that she took the opportunity to
have some refreshment, before the next stage, the procession to Westminster
Hall for the banquet. She certainly changed her apparel and came forth in a
‘rich mantle and surcoat of purple velvet furred with ermines’.

For the last stage, she left
bishops and clergy behind her in the Abbey – they had after all performed their
function and served her turn – and carrying sceptre and orb in her hands, ‘she
returned very cheerfully, with a most smiling countenance for every one, giving
them a thousand greetings, so that in my opinion’ – says an Italian onlooker –
‘she exceeded the bounds of gravity and decorum.’ She could well afford to be
pleased with herself. She had been crowned with full Catholic ritual without
committing herself to the maintenance of her sister’s Catholicism, indeed leaving
herself free to follow the course she thought best for the country.

A.L. Rowse’s The England of Elizabeth is republished by Palgrave, 2003.

Lutheran

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About Me

Retired. Reformed and Presbyterian by background, but dedicated to the Anglican Prayerbook with degrees from Presbyterian and Episcopal seminaries. Informed by both traditions. Not giving up the 1662 BCP for the Presbyterians and not giving up the Westminster Standards for the Anglicans.